Chapter 6 - THE SILVER ROSARY
“Where did you get that?” Victor breathed, his gun slightly wavering.
“My mother’s sewing box,” Leo said.
Luca stepped forward, his eyes fixed on the silver rosary.
“That’s the Bellini family crest on the crucifix,” Luca said softly. He looked at Victor. “You lost that the night my mother was poisoned. The police tore the city apart looking for the man who left it behind.”
Victor’s hand shook. “Pick it up, Vanessa.”
Vanessa didn’t move. She stared at the rosary like it was a coiled snake.
“I said pick it up!” Victor roared.
But before she could step forward, the front doors of the mansion swung open again.
A frail, older woman walked in. She was leaning heavily on a cane, wearing a simple woolen coat over a faded dress.
“Mom,” I gasped.
My mother, Sarah Sullivan, walked slowly into the foyer of the Moretti mansion for the first time in twenty years.
She looked at Victor, then at the gun pointed at Leo’s head.
She didn’t look afraid. She looked angry.
“I warned you, Victor,” my mother said, her voice raspy but echoing clearly in the silent hall. “I told you twenty years ago, if you ever touched my children again, I would finish what Maria Moretti started.”
Victor scoffed, trying to regain his composure. “You’re a crippled seamstress, Sarah. You have nothing.”
“I have the DNA results,” my mother said.
She pulled a thick manila envelope from her coat pocket.
“I gave the police the other half of that rosary an hour ago,” my mother continued calmly. “The half with your skin cells still trapped in the silver links from when Maria fought back.”
Victor’s eyes widened in sheer terror.
“And I also gave them the banking records you used to pay off the truck driver who ran Arthur off the bridge,” she added.
Sirens wailed in the distance. They were getting closer. Fast.
Victor panicked. He shoved Leo forward, sending my brother crashing into me. I caught him, wrapping my arms tightly around him.
Victor aimed the gun at my mother.
“Then you die first!” he screamed.
A gunshot rang out.
Deafening. Brutal.
But my mother didn’t fall.
Victor Bellini dropped his gun, clutching his shoulder as blood instantly soaked through his expensive suit.
Standing behind him, a smoking pistol in his hand, was Luca.
Luca hadn’t hesitated. He had drawn his weapon and fired in a fraction of a second.
Victor collapsed to his knees, groaning in agony.
Vanessa screamed, dropping to the floor beside him.
The front doors burst open, and heavily armed Chicago police officers flooded the foyer. They immediately pinned Victor to the ground and slapped handcuffs on Vanessa.
“No! I didn’t do anything! I’m the victim!” Vanessa shrieked as she was dragged away.
The sirens faded into flashing red and blue lights painting the marble walls.
The threat was gone.
I knelt on the floor, holding Leo, crying into his shoulder. My mother walked over and gently placed her hand on my head.
Luca holstered his weapon.
He didn’t look at the police. He didn’t look at the fleeing guests.
He walked slowly toward us.
He knelt down on the hard marble floor, right beside me and Leo.
He reached out a trembling hand.
And for the first time in twenty years, Luca Moretti touched his little brother’s face.
May you like
But as Leo pulled him into a tearful hug, I noticed something sticking out of Luca’s jacket pocket.
It was a small, velvet jewelry box.
